Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 00:17:35 -0700 (PDT) From: "R. B. Riddick" <arne_woerner@yahoo.com> To: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org>, Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com> Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Subject: Re: seeding dev/random in 5.5 Message-ID: <20060809071735.71840.qmail@web30310.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <44D922E0.5050005@FreeBSD.org>
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--- Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> wrote: > The patches you sent to implement this option didn't come through to the > mailing list, could you resend them please? :) > > Seriously though, a lot of people looked at this problem when yarrow was > introduced, and no solution became immediately apparent. So, if someone > wants to take a crack at implementing something, knock yourself out. > Since this is the security mailing list, I would like to direct the attention on the following points: * I see in the CD-procedure the problem, that a postman, who is more sophisticated than in Leslie Nielsen's "Naked Gun 33 1/3" movie, might exchange the media, so that u let ur Netherlandish install something u dont know and/or like. Workaround: Do you use a checksum over the media (`md5 < /dev/acd0`) and transmit those checksum on a different way (maybe email)? * I received a private communication yesterday about this matter. But the list did not. I will cite (not litterally) a little bit out of that message: Since you do not know anything about the remotely created host-key, u cannot connect safely to the freshly installed box, because: You do not even know the signature of the new host-key, so that if u connect to the wrong box u would not even known. Workaround: You could give all hosts the same well-known host-key (via your install-image-CD) and then u could change the host-key in a remotely controlled way individually and note down the signature? Maybe my secret informer (lets call him Rasmus or RK) wants to come public... :-) * But what if the postman (see first point) know already the host-key from reading the CD? Then he could log in to ur boxes... -Arne __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
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